Is the 1TB 3.5" SEAGATE HYBRID DRIVE A fast drive?

Littlesackninja

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Jun 15, 2014
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Hi, im building a PC and i have a quick question, Is the 1TB 3.5" SEAGATE HYBRID DRIVE contain a fast hdd? I knoew it has the ssd but is the hdd part of it fast aswell?

Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
Spindle: 7,200 RPM
Cache: 64MB
NAND Cache: 8GB MLC
Average Data Rate from NAND: 190 MB/s
Average Data Rate: 158 MB/s
Average Latency: <12ms
Power
Operating: 1TB 5.9W, 2TB 6.7W
Idle: 1TB 3.3W, 2TB 3.6W

Mini question:
Is 7,200 A fast spindle speed and is 64mb cache a good size?
 


7200 RPM and 64mb cache is perfectly sufficient for everyday computing and gaming. The HDD portion of the Seagate Hybrid is decent. But much you're better off with a separate 1 TB HDD and 120GB SSD.
 
7,200 RPM and 64mb cache are pretty standard. You could expect higher performance from the hybrid drive than from a conventional hard drive, but depending on what you are doing, the 8gb cache can get over-run pretty quickly, especially if you are moving from large application to large application.

So to answer your question, I don't think the HDD portion of the hybrid drive performs any differently than the mid-level HDD's they offer, probably the same exact spindle, platters and primary HDD controller which then hit another controller that bridges the SSD and HDD together.
 
My research showed that the hybrid drives showed no discernible increase in speed. I would agree with what others have posted - get an SSD and a separate HDD for large storage. That's my current setup.
 
Definitely get the separate 120GB SSD and the separate HDD. The hybrid drives are overly complex compared to individual parts and haven't been around long enough for real reliability figures. Also, if one part of the hybrid goes down, you lose everything.

On the SSD, just install whatever applications you want to load the fastest. With a separate HDD, games etc will also load faster than if you used the hybrid drive since the HDD is only focusing on the individual application instead of needing to deal with all the windows I/O etc.
 
The Samsung EVO drives are pretty much the fastest and most reliable ones out of your choices. The Samsung drives are really up there for the random I/O operations, which are what really matter for a good desktop computer experience.

I've had every single one of my intel drives I put into workstations fail, 6 in total, so I never recommend the intel products. The Kingston drives are fine and very reliable, just not as fast as the Samsung ones.